Title: I Can't Help Myself
Author: jillrenay
Characters: Simon, Kaylee, Inara, Mal, River, mentions of Jayne and Zoë
Rating: PG
Word Count: Just over 3000
Disclaimer: Firefly/Serenity and its characters are owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions. I own nothing, unless, I would be rich.
Written For: The Kaylee/Simon Fluff-A-Thon at imeantosay (LJ Community)
Wanted: inept Simon, the kitchen/dining area, upset Kaylee (not necessarily at something Simon said). Can be inspired by Tonic's song "Mountain".
Author's Notes: This is from Simon's POV and this is my first ever time writing any sort of Firefly ever. If it sucks, it's all my fault. Comments, criticisms and all sorts of questions accepted. I'll try to answer with the best of my knowledge. I had fun writing it.

I Can't Help Myself

Kaylee was upset and I was confused. There was no doubt in my mind that Jayne had something, if not everything to do with it but that wasn't my concern at the moment. Inara, River and I were preparing dinner for the crew when Kaylee zoomed past us in a mad dash for the engine room and Jayne was tumbling after her, tripping over non-existent obstacles and taking chairs with him. I was curious to say the least and just a bit concerned when River mumbled something after Jayne disappeared from the room and followed Kaylee further into the back of the ship.

I looked on – into the blank hole that lead down the corridor and kept staring until Inara nudged my side and brought me back to the reality in front of me. This reality was good, for now. Inara was making a, from what I could tell so far, delicious dish and River was excited just to be adding the main ingredient – pineapples. They were as rare as strawberries on this side of the 'verse nowadays and extremely expensive. I remembered reading in one of the papers on Persephone that they were now so rare that the remaining ones from the planets under Alliance rule had been seized and were now only being cooked, cut and served for fancy events and special occasions; the things that I might have been invited to once upon a time, but not now.

My eyes drifted away from the girls next to me again, back to the food that I was preparing for dinner himself. Just a simple salad, nothing much to it except the dicing and chopping of the various vegetables that one would see in a salad normally. We had been thankful that the latest job had gone well. We had actually gotten paid and food would finally grace the table once again. It wasn't as if food was scarce, it had just been a while since we all had the opportunity to sit down all together and eat. But seeing as another pointless fight about nothing had erupted between the mechanic and the jackass, as I always referred to him as, another opportunity would be missed.

Dinner was served promptly at six o'clock in some time zone. River had pointed out that there was no time in space, just random numbers speaking to us in different formulas that she had noticed when we passed by a specific planet or a precise charted territory in the endless sky. No one except for the Jackass had commented on it. Kaylee had sat beside me, remaining silent through the whole meal. I tried to make a few jokes to lighten the tension, but to no prevail. The only ones seeming to have a good time at all were River and Mal, making awful puns and small talk about flying. I wasn't paying attention though, for my gaze and concentration was on Kaylee.
Inara had told me once before that it would be safer for me and for the rest of the crew if I didn't rush after Kaylee when she was upset. The rule was similar to waiting an hour before jumping back into the pool after eating – everyone was advised to stay away for at least an hour when Kaylee was upset. Apparently, before this time around – and this is how you can tell that Kaylee was good at what she does – she threatened Mal that she would stop the ship right where they were. And she did too. They didn't move until three hours later when Mal finally apologized for whatever he had said or done.

So, I sit here waiting. The last fifteen minutes is almost up as I watch River read through the Shepherd's Bible and make remarks about being historically incorrect and notice that Inara is cutting some of the leftover pineapple that we chose to hide from the rest of the crew. She takes out the strawberries as well and it's only then that an idea spawns in my head. And as much as everyone would like to discourage me in doing so, I'm going to go after Kaylee and she can bite my head off if she wants. All I want to do is see her and make sure she's still alive…and well, not planning on leaving up five thousand light years from the nearest galaxy anytime soon.

I escape from the table without my sister screaming and crying her eyes out – another combined emotion that has just emerged without any sort of signs whatsoever – but I don't concentrate on that right now. I concentrate on conning Inara to let me have a bundle of those strawberries so I can take them to Kaylee. Hopefully by taking them to her, that would earn me some much needed Brownie points and a genuine Kaylee smile that I always love seeing.

As I walk up towards the counter where Inara is gracefully standing and so seductively slicing the juicy pineapple, I spot Mal standing in the north corridor and just staring at the way Inara is enticing him. It's amazing to me and everyone else on Serenity that they keep ignoring the sparks between them. But I don't, won't, can't, and refuse to play matchmaker between anyone. It's pointless and if they absolutely wanted it to happen, then a little thing called fate would step in and take the wheel.

My mind shifts off of the puzzle that is Mal and Inara and back to the candy apple red strawberries that are sitting silently on the counter next to Inara's hands. She spots my gaze immediately and has to comment on it. She notices things and always brings a smile to accompany the conversation. That is one thing I will never tire of while River and I are aboard. I will also never tire of Kaylee, but everyone knew that already.

"Do you value your life Simon?" That wasn't the response I was hoping to get from the companion, but it was a start to a long pleading-fest that would stretch into the fifteen minute mark, like I had estimated I had left before Kaylee was fully steamed off and cool again.

"Yes, I do."

"Then you have at least ten more minutes," she says calmly, never taking her eyes off of the knife that still slices the last half of the pineapple.

"I can walk slower," I start to argue. An overpriced education at the Alliance's top university and that's all I can come up with.

"The lady's right, Doc," Mal finally makes a sound and tramples down the stairs, almost too energetic to get involved in this conversation. Next thing you know, they'll have Zoë and Jayne here trying to discourage me too and that's when River will get involved. And I don't need her involved in this. She's content right now and that's good…for me, her and the rest of the crew.

Mal stops short of the counter, peeking in on what River is reading and then continues his stroll towards us again. Since our victory, more or less, against the Alliance and me and my sister finally off of the most wanted list, the captain has become quite smitten with her and that finally brings a smile to my face after months of arguing with him on the subject.

Since the so-called victory, which wasn't really a victory since we lost two of our own, but since the event when all of us truly become big damn heroes, I've been spending less and less nights by the infirmary and more and more nights by the engine room. I know that River can handle herself and when she has the nightmares, which are seldom these days; Mal is usually the first one there, followed by Inara. And back to my point, if it's one thing that I know – it's that unless I go there and feed her strawberries immediately, I will be sleeping by the infirmary again which is definitely something that I don't want. I like sleeping with her – next to her, my arms over hers; fingers trickling down her soft, glistening skin. I want that.

Reaching over the counter and ignoring both of their stares and objections that I know will soon come, I scoop up some of the slices with a spoon, of course, and slip them into a spare bowl that Inara had purposely gotten out for the pineapple rather than the strawberries. She probably had a fruit salad in mind, but I quickly changed her mind about that.

I start to venture out and away from the counter, hearing both of them and my sister brush my notion off their shoulders and go back to the banter that they are famous for. I hear Inara ask if Mal just complimented her by calling her a lady and then River pops in, giving the full definition of a lady. Somehow, I keep flashing back to when she and I were younger and our parents used to tease each other like that. It was bittersweet now and I can almost see the irony flashing in front of my eyes. But I brush them off, like they did me, and continue on my path towards my new place of residence that I hope is still in a livable condition after what Jayne caused.

I knew before I even set foot in the engine room that I wasn't going to get the reason she was mad at him out of her – at least not at the first moment but I knew I would get it out of her and tell her that I would talk to him about it. Of course, she and I both knew I was joking on the latter. I didn't like Jayne, everyone knew that – for several reasons that most already knew and others that they did not.

The hammock draws my attention away from the gigantic engine that stares at me, circling around in loops that, even though being a doctor and becoming accustomed to all the machines that looped me and everyone of my patients around in, could still make me dizzy. I carefully set the bowl of strawberries down on the single stand she has beside her hammock and call out her name, hoping she'd actually come out of hiding from under the engine or wherever she was in this room.

"Kaylee," I'm not too loud or to quiet, but there was still no answer. I know she's in the engine room; it's the only place she runs besides into Inara's shuttle when she wants to be alone and take out her frustration by yelling where no one can hear her. If she's in her, err, our room nowadays, then maybe I don't know her as well as I think I do. I pause for a second to think about that. No, definitely. I know her. She's in the engine room.

"Kaylee," I call her name again, this time a little louder and walk off to the side where I pray I can finally see her tinkering with something. And I do. But I'm not accustomed to the cranky Kaylee just yet. I've seen her before, but I'm new and still adjusting to what we have here. "Kaylee," third time's a charm, they always say. This time, my voice is softer, at a normal level one would say.

"What?" she snaps, pulling a wire or cord or something that's long and red from the wall, and doesn't turn around.

"I come in peace," I hold my hands up and back away ever so slightly, wanting to give the impression that I'm claiming to be Switzerland at the moment.

Her shoulders slump as I bring down my hands and let my arms fall to my sides. I stroll up behind her again, carefully laying my hands on her bare shoulders. I look around for her jacket that she had been wearing during dinner this evening and find it rolled up into a ball and kicked over into a corner at the opposite end of the good sized room. I watch her fiddling with things on the wall, my hands still on her shoulders and I can feel the tension in them. Kinesthetics were never my specialty in med school but I try to remember some of the techniques that I was oh so awkward at while in the class to ease her tension and stress from her body.

I glance at what she's throwing over her and my shoulders both and notice that the piece of wiring that she just threw was something that we needed to keep flying in the sky. I'm just a little worried now. Not truly about Kaylee and her mind and the moment, but of my life. I always knew I would die, but not by her hand.

"Uh, Kay, you're not…" I take a deep breath and gulp once to make sure I have enough energy to ask her this, "you're not planning on booby-trapping Serenity, are you?"

She turns around slowly, my hands stop the massage I had going on and I rest them onto her lower back as I have a loose grip around her waist. I know she sees my face full of worry. After tales upon tales that the jackass and the captain have told me, I can finally see why they told me the stories. But after I get one of those genuine Kaylee smiles that I love to see and get, a part of it washes away. But I'm not fully convinced that she isn't purposely trying to shanghai us in the middle of nowhere.

She starts giggling at me as I call her name again, this time in a more what-are-you-up-to kind of way. "Kay…"

"I'm not sabotaging Serenity, Simon. I promise you," her smile comes up again, but yet for the third time, I think, I'm still not fully convinced. She turns around quickly in my loose grip, finishing what she was doing in the first place and when she says, "done!"

"Done?" I'm not entirely sure that's a good sign. I am now officially in full worry mode. And it won't help that she'll reassure me that we're still moving and going to another planet not far off from here for another job of some kind.

She turns around again, smiling big like I like to see her do. "Done," she assures me again.

"Kay, what did you do? More importantly, what did Jayne do?" I try to squeeze the argument out early so I don't have to hear about it when I'm almost asleep in her arms and then she'll have a one-more-thing moment.

"I just fixed his heating problem, that's all," she pauses and I know she's wanting to come up with another excuse not to answer me on what Jayne exactly did or didn't do, "everything's shiny, Simon."

"Shiny, sure," I'm still not convinced. But I leave it for later as I remember the strawberries probably juiceless because of the heat coming off the engine and I remember that she is probably craving them. Barely eating enough at dinner, I know that she is. I back away from her and clutch onto her hand. Pulling a smile onto my face, I know that the words I'm about to say will bring another Kaylee smile into my life. "I have something for you."

And there it is. I didn't lie. She jumps up and down like a three year old in line for their first Santa visit and an elf, complete in jingle shoes and red and white striped stockings, offers her a gigantic candy cane. I erase the real reason why I'm back here in the first place and focus on her being Kaylee once again – the heart of Serenity.

I pull her back towards the entrance, her hand still in mine and I feel her other hand come up to my bicep. She teases too easily, I think to myself and I let her. I love it when she does that. Taking my free hand, I latch onto the bowl of, as I predicted, juiceless strawberries and show them to her. My disappointed face tells the front page story: Doctor leaves juicy strawberries meant for girlfriend by Engine. Full Story on Page Two. But she smiles at me anyway, noting the effort to make her day a little better.

"You brought me strawberries," she says in an almost cooing voice that makes my heart flutter a bit. I can't help it. I look back at her smiling and it only makes me smile back at her more. I can't help but love her. She's amazing, sweet, funny and genuine. Something that I have been looking for my whole life.

"I was going to sneak some pineapple too, but Inara had the knife," I joke and her eyes meet mine again for the first time since earlier this morning. We've seen each other during the day – but I was in the infirmary, trying to patch Zoë up from a deep wound she acquired from a claw of some sort while Kaylee was in the engine room, of course, replacing old parts with new ones, so we could fly to a more civilized part of the universe.

"Well, yeah," Kaylee says like I should know that every day, "she's really handy with it to. Haven't you seen her act? She does some really kinky stuff with it in bed, I hear."

It's her turn to joke with me, I guess. Rolling my eyes as she plucks a slice from the bowl and places it in her mouth, I can't resist anymore. I have to kiss her. And I do. The kiss is warm and sensual. My hand drops the bowl back onto the stand beside the hammock and I pull her closer instantaneously. She feels so good against me, weaved in my arms and I really don't want to let go of her. But I know she'll pull back again, if only for the strawberries.

She does pull back moments later and I zone back into the ship. Her kisses are powerful and always leave me craving more. She reaches for the bowl of strawberries behind us and moves slightly out of my loose grip, I see this as my chance to sneak in the question that I'm bound to ask sooner or later. I'm wanting to get it done sooner rather than later. "What did you do to Jayne's heating?"

"Oh, that?"

"That," I echo. I wait while she plucks another strawberry out of the bowl and into her mouth, casually sliding onto the hammock. "Kay…"

"I just fixed his heating problem, that's all," she says casually.

"I wasn't aware that Jayne had a heating problem."

"He does now," she smiles back up at me with half a strawberry in her mouth and I can't help but smile back.

If there was any doubt in my mind that Kaylee wasn't meant for me; that just washed it away. And again, I can't help but smile bigger and move towards her in the hammock. I'm on autopilot as I climb into the hammock with her, my lips touching her collar bone and I hear her giggle. And I just can't help but love her.